This gazebo is beautiful. We just finished putting it up today. The directions were fairly simple as long as you are handy. It took us 2 evenings after work, and a Saturday morning to put it up with 2 or 3 people on hand to help. We used real tools, not the ones provided. We are planning to hang privacy curtains and screens as soon as we decide how to do the rods. And we are going to screen the gabled ends to keep bugs out. I want to live in it.
We just complete assembly of the Sunjoy 14x12 Metal roof gazebo. My wife and I assembled it ourselves. All wood and metal parts were available, nothing was missing. Sunjoy did include extra hardware, mainly extra nuts, bolts, washers and screws. We needed to use only one washer from the extras. We were mainly concerned about standing the first posts up, but we found that with the post base attached, they would stand mostly on their own. We did not follow the pictorial assembly instructions in sequence. We assembled the short end beams first, rather than the longer end with the thinking that they would be easier to stand up, and support with a piece of scrap wood screwed to the post. We also attached the angled support to the post and beam first, not after all four posts were up and connected. The tricky part was attaching the last two beams because of the way the ends of the beams are designed, you can't insert a bolt with the other end on the ground. Both ends have to be held up to the heighth of the posts. Another challenge was installing the Roof beam because it sits on top of the "triangular support" at the top of the gable. This metal on metal contact was very slippery and at the tallest part of both ends. We ended up tying one end with a rope very securely while attaching the other end. Finally a very tricky part was alignment of all the roof panels. A little misalignment at one end created an issue where the holes and screw points were totally obscured. I had to loosen all bolt connections along the roof to get everything lined up. Also we decided to stain the wood with redwood natural transparent stain after the posts were up but before the roof assembly, and the gazebo looks great!